15 ms·

Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

113 points by hsnewman 5y ago

rntn 5y ago
A very good piece of journalism explaining the problem for non physicists. For me personally, the discussion by the researchers about their guiding principles for conducting scientific research was a great reminder for all researchers.. As that section concluded : "Science is organized in skepticism."
- netsharc 5y ago
  Very good? It feels patronising to me... "[I]t involves physics that'll explode our minds. Trust me."? "To get a W boson in the first place, you literally have to smash two protons together."? Feels like it's aimed at 5th graders...
  - tux3 5y ago
    If anything deserves to be patronizing, it is probably high-energy physics. The reader should not expect to truly understand anything, or be able to deduce anything, after reading the pop-sci explanations of particle physics experiments. Analogies have the problem that you never know where they stop, and so you can't safely reason any further from what you've been told. It is bad if you walk away thinking you know more than you really do. If you're not reading the math, you're fundamentally in the business of being told simplified stories made up of lies we tell to children. If anything, the article that makes you feel like a 5th grader is honest. As far as I'm concerned, it might still be talking up to me.
    - nonrandomstring 5y ago
      Well argued. Once I was very into this and took pride in being able to read through Planck, Einstein and derive wave mechanics from first principles. At 50, when it comes to modern theoretical physics I do feel like a 5th grader again. I am still interested. While in other subject areas I remain at multiple PhD level we can't stay match-fit at every intellectual game forever. So I don't see this as necessarily being written for 5th graders, though I am grateful for good science writing to keep up interest for people like myself who are super interested but need the 5th grader down-talking to stand in for pages of equations that are now well beyond me to follow.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
hprotagonist 5y ago
we'd have to change our understanding of how all the particles in the universe work. Well, remember the new paper? We're pretty much entering that worst case scenario. I believe you mean "best case"! There was much hue and cry after the Higgs discovery because the result, at least from the outside, seemed like "welp, we predicted a thing and found it and we don't have any new physics to disagree with; what a letdown!" worst case here would be something like "oh, we thought it was 7 sigma, but actually we can completely account for the discrepancy because the instrument deformed slowly under its own weight for the last decade and now we're 4 angstroms off and we still don't have any new physics to disagree with!"
- brtkdotse 5y ago
  > the instrument deformed slowly under its own weight for the last decade and now we're 4 angstroms off This was hilarious and plausible at the same time. Nice work!
  - smueller1234 5y ago
    Totally plausible indeed! One of the recent (past decade or so) major mistaken discoveries in particle physics was a cabling issue. And from a different field, but closer to the quip: semiconductor lithography lenses' own weight causes stresses that cause birefringence in the optics that has to be explicitly corrected for. And that was true 20 years ago already. (Recovering particle physicist here and thinking about this even much later gives me mild trauma. ;) )
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      > One of the recent (past decade or so) major mistaken discoveries in particle physics was a cabling issue. Have more info on this or link about it?
      - perihelions 5y ago
        I'm guessing the parent is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano...
IAmGraydon 5y ago
This article states that the most recent measurement agrees with others over the last decade. That is simply not true. https://non-trivial-solution.blogspot.com/2022/04/do-we-have-finally-found-new-physics.html https://non-trivial-solution.blogspot.com/2022/04/do-we-have...
- lupire 5y ago
  > this finally the sign of new physics, which we all have been hoping for? I don't understand this mindset? Why (aside from creating jobs) is it good to discover that the universe is more complicated than we knew, or that we were wrong? To me, what we want in "new physics" is explanations for unexplained phenomena, or resolutions to know problems/inconsistencies (like quantum vs gravity), or emergent effects that less to interesting applications.
  - ashildr 5y ago
    > Why (aside from creating jobs) is it good to discover that the universe is more complicated than we knew, or that we were wrong? Because this would give us hints to new degrees of freedom in the current models that seem to contradict each other but otherwise work extremely well in their respective their domains. Finding a crack in those hermetically closed models would be wonderful.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    There are a lot of different teams. Some teams are working trying to resolve the Quantum Gravity problem. I doubt this is useful for them, at least for now. Other team are working in particle colliders. They get a Nobel price if they discover a new particle or a correction to the "Standard Model". Hopefully both teams will meet somewhere in the middle. Perhaps a new experiment will give a hint about how to make quantum gravity work. Perhaps a new theory of quantum gravity will predict a result that can be tested in a particle collider. Don't expect this to be soon. And there are many other teams that are working in one of the N-2 areas of Physics that are unrelated and their research is not affected by a Quantum Gravity theory or modification to the "Standard Model".
  - 5y ago
darepublic 5y ago
The theorists working on their own grand explanations take heart
lupire 5y ago
The fun thing about measurement physics is that you never know if your cool tool is measuring something in the universe, or if you are using something in the Universe to test and find bugs in your tool.
- ISL 5y ago
  That's why you build another instrument that is demonstrably a factor of two more sensitive -- it either detects the new thing with much higher precision or credibly disproves the old measurement and makes forward progress at the same time. If you can't do that, then you build another instrument that uses a different technique but reaches similar sensitivity. If the two instruments disagree, this will tend to lead to confusion and general wringing of hands. If at all possible, do the aforementioned higher-sensitivity plan.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "That's why you build another instrument that is demonstrably a factor of two more sensitive" This is not possible
    - ISL 5y ago
      It definitely is. In this specific case, LHC will almost certainly yield improved mass measurements. Just as Fermilab published this result a decade after the Tevatron shut down, increasingly refined measurements like this will continue to emerge from LHC through ~2050 or so.
ta988 5y ago
I just finished reading the three-body problem. So I had a chuckle. Just some good ol' Sophons.
beezle 5y ago
I watched the CDF presentation early yesterday morning at the April APS meeting. Nothing to indicate they were anything but meticulous in their data analysis and modeling. Keep in mind the main change in CDF II is a great reduction in uncertainty - the central value is not much changed from the original CDF results many years ago. Tommaso Dorigo [1] covers a lot of the points where some of their assumptions/methods can be reasonably questioned but the effects would not push the result that much closer to the current SM theoretical value. [1] https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/is_the_cdf_w_mass_measurement_a_nail_in_the_sm_coffin-256017 https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/is_the_cdf_w_mass_m...
- larsrc 5y ago
  I must say, those error bars are impressive.
plaguepilled 5y ago
I am champing at the bit for more information about follow ups. Are verification trials planned? Who is doing them? When can we expect answers? Anyone in the know that can help me on this one?
- spuz 5y ago
  I suspect these questions will be answered soon in an episode of PBS space time. Keep an eye out on their feed.
matthewsmith2 5y ago
Question from a noob. If the W Boson is heavier than we thought, could that explain dark matter?
- Flankk 5y ago
  I was wondering the same thing. Dark matter has never been observed. Its existence is based entirely on equations.
  - sydthrowaway 5y ago
    How about black holes?
    - umeshunni 5y ago
      Black holes are made of regular matter not dark matter because they interact with electromagnetic waves.
      - spuz 5y ago
        Dark matter interacts with light in the same way as a black hole does. They both have mass and therefore both bend space (and light passing through that space) around them. It's already known that what we call dark matter in some contexts (e.g. the mass that holds galaxies together) is at least partly made of black holes. We just don't know if black holes account for 100% or 1% of the dark matter that we believe exists in a typical galaxy.
    - madaxe_again 5y ago
      They’ve been both predicted and observed. Dark matter is a conjectural solution for an anomaly in the rotational speed of galaxies across their discs. In my opinion, it’s almost certainly a bodge, and if the W boson has a different mass to that expected it could account for what we call dark matter, as the implications go far beyond just the additional mass - if the mass is off, then perhaps the nature of the weak force is misunderstood - for instance, perhaps the mass variance is driven by a hidden variable, and that in turn could account for what we regard as “dark” phenomena.
kristianp 5y ago
No mention of how far away from the prediction the mass is?
Pinegulf 5y ago
Worried? No, no no... Something seem to be odd and that's wonderful. Discovery awaits.
guelo 5y ago
Recent related discussions Newly Measured Particle Seems Heavy Enough to Break Known Physics(https://www.quantamagazine.org/fermilab-says-particle-is-heavy-enough-to-break-the-standard-model-20220407/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/fermilab-says-particle-is-hea...) 189 points|digital55|7 days ago|122 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30948260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30948260 Measurement of the W boson mass reveals 7σ deviation from calculations(https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781) 355 points|nvalis|6 days ago|151 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30955033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30955033 Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'(https://www.cnet.com/science/why-scientists-are-worried-about-the-w-boson-something-is-amiss/ https://www.cnet.com/science/why-scientists-are-worried-abou...) 74 points|hsnewman|4 days ago|41 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30977931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30977931
hanselot 5y ago
gwbas1c 5y ago
Remember that the Theory of Relativity came about because of discrepancies with Newton's laws of mechanics and observations of the planets' orbits. Hopefully this opens doors for plenty of new research and discoveries.

113 points by hsnewman 5y ago

rntn 5y ago

A very good piece of journalism explaining the problem for non physicists. For me personally, the discussion by the researchers about their guiding principles for conducting scientific research was a great reminder for all researchers.. As that section concluded : "Science is organized in skepticism."

netsharc 5y ago
Very good? It feels patronising to me... "[I]t involves physics that'll explode our minds. Trust me."? "To get a W boson in the first place, you literally have to smash two protons together."? Feels like it's aimed at 5th graders...
- tux3 5y ago
  If anything deserves to be patronizing, it is probably high-energy physics. The reader should not expect to truly understand anything, or be able to deduce anything, after reading the pop-sci explanations of particle physics experiments. Analogies have the problem that you never know where they stop, and so you can't safely reason any further from what you've been told. It is bad if you walk away thinking you know more than you really do. If you're not reading the math, you're fundamentally in the business of being told simplified stories made up of lies we tell to children. If anything, the article that makes you feel like a 5th grader is honest. As far as I'm concerned, it might still be talking up to me.
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    Well argued. Once I was very into this and took pride in being able to read through Planck, Einstein and derive wave mechanics from first principles. At 50, when it comes to modern theoretical physics I do feel like a 5th grader again. I am still interested. While in other subject areas I remain at multiple PhD level we can't stay match-fit at every intellectual game forever. So I don't see this as necessarily being written for 5th graders, though I am grateful for good science writing to keep up interest for people like myself who are super interested but need the 5th grader down-talking to stand in for pages of equations that are now well beyond me to follow.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

hprotagonist 5y ago

we'd have to change our understanding of how all the particles in the universe work. Well, remember the new paper? We're pretty much entering that worst case scenario. I believe you mean "best case"! There was much hue and cry after the Higgs discovery because the result, at least from the outside, seemed like "welp, we predicted a thing and found it and we don't have any new physics to disagree with; what a letdown!" worst case here would be something like "oh, we thought it was 7 sigma, but actually we can completely account for the discrepancy because the instrument deformed slowly under its own weight for the last decade and now we're 4 angstroms off and we still don't have any new physics to disagree with!"

brtkdotse 5y ago
> the instrument deformed slowly under its own weight for the last decade and now we're 4 angstroms off This was hilarious and plausible at the same time. Nice work!
- smueller1234 5y ago
  Totally plausible indeed! One of the recent (past decade or so) major mistaken discoveries in particle physics was a cabling issue. And from a different field, but closer to the quip: semiconductor lithography lenses' own weight causes stresses that cause birefringence in the optics that has to be explicitly corrected for. And that was true 20 years ago already. (Recovering particle physicist here and thinking about this even much later gives me mild trauma. ;) )
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    > One of the recent (past decade or so) major mistaken discoveries in particle physics was a cabling issue. Have more info on this or link about it?
    - perihelions 5y ago
      I'm guessing the parent is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano...

IAmGraydon 5y ago

This article states that the most recent measurement agrees with others over the last decade. That is simply not true. https://non-trivial-solution.blogspot.com/2022/04/do-we-have-finally-found-new-physics.html https://non-trivial-solution.blogspot.com/2022/04/do-we-have...

lupire 5y ago
> this finally the sign of new physics, which we all have been hoping for? I don't understand this mindset? Why (aside from creating jobs) is it good to discover that the universe is more complicated than we knew, or that we were wrong? To me, what we want in "new physics" is explanations for unexplained phenomena, or resolutions to know problems/inconsistencies (like quantum vs gravity), or emergent effects that less to interesting applications.
- ashildr 5y ago
  > Why (aside from creating jobs) is it good to discover that the universe is more complicated than we knew, or that we were wrong? Because this would give us hints to new degrees of freedom in the current models that seem to contradict each other but otherwise work extremely well in their respective their domains. Finding a crack in those hermetically closed models would be wonderful.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  There are a lot of different teams. Some teams are working trying to resolve the Quantum Gravity problem. I doubt this is useful for them, at least for now. Other team are working in particle colliders. They get a Nobel price if they discover a new particle or a correction to the "Standard Model". Hopefully both teams will meet somewhere in the middle. Perhaps a new experiment will give a hint about how to make quantum gravity work. Perhaps a new theory of quantum gravity will predict a result that can be tested in a particle collider. Don't expect this to be soon. And there are many other teams that are working in one of the N-2 areas of Physics that are unrelated and their research is not affected by a Quantum Gravity theory or modification to the "Standard Model".
- 5y ago

darepublic 5y ago

The theorists working on their own grand explanations take heart

lupire 5y ago

The fun thing about measurement physics is that you never know if your cool tool is measuring something in the universe, or if you are using something in the Universe to test and find bugs in your tool.

ISL 5y ago
That's why you build another instrument that is demonstrably a factor of two more sensitive -- it either detects the new thing with much higher precision or credibly disproves the old measurement and makes forward progress at the same time. If you can't do that, then you build another instrument that uses a different technique but reaches similar sensitivity. If the two instruments disagree, this will tend to lead to confusion and general wringing of hands. If at all possible, do the aforementioned higher-sensitivity plan.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "That's why you build another instrument that is demonstrably a factor of two more sensitive" This is not possible
  - ISL 5y ago
    It definitely is. In this specific case, LHC will almost certainly yield improved mass measurements. Just as Fermilab published this result a decade after the Tevatron shut down, increasingly refined measurements like this will continue to emerge from LHC through ~2050 or so.

ta988 5y ago

I just finished reading the three-body problem. So I had a chuckle. Just some good ol' Sophons.

beezle 5y ago

I watched the CDF presentation early yesterday morning at the April APS meeting. Nothing to indicate they were anything but meticulous in their data analysis and modeling. Keep in mind the main change in CDF II is a great reduction in uncertainty - the central value is not much changed from the original CDF results many years ago. Tommaso Dorigo [1] covers a lot of the points where some of their assumptions/methods can be reasonably questioned but the effects would not push the result that much closer to the current SM theoretical value. [1] https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/is_the_cdf_w_mass_measurement_a_nail_in_the_sm_coffin-256017 https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/is_the_cdf_w_mass_m...

larsrc 5y ago
I must say, those error bars are impressive.

plaguepilled 5y ago

I am champing at the bit for more information about follow ups. Are verification trials planned? Who is doing them? When can we expect answers? Anyone in the know that can help me on this one?

spuz 5y ago
I suspect these questions will be answered soon in an episode of PBS space time. Keep an eye out on their feed.

matthewsmith2 5y ago

Question from a noob. If the W Boson is heavier than we thought, could that explain dark matter?

Flankk 5y ago
I was wondering the same thing. Dark matter has never been observed. Its existence is based entirely on equations.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  How about black holes?
  - umeshunni 5y ago
    Black holes are made of regular matter not dark matter because they interact with electromagnetic waves.
    - spuz 5y ago
      Dark matter interacts with light in the same way as a black hole does. They both have mass and therefore both bend space (and light passing through that space) around them. It's already known that what we call dark matter in some contexts (e.g. the mass that holds galaxies together) is at least partly made of black holes. We just don't know if black holes account for 100% or 1% of the dark matter that we believe exists in a typical galaxy.
  - madaxe_again 5y ago
    They’ve been both predicted and observed. Dark matter is a conjectural solution for an anomaly in the rotational speed of galaxies across their discs. In my opinion, it’s almost certainly a bodge, and if the W boson has a different mass to that expected it could account for what we call dark matter, as the implications go far beyond just the additional mass - if the mass is off, then perhaps the nature of the weak force is misunderstood - for instance, perhaps the mass variance is driven by a hidden variable, and that in turn could account for what we regard as “dark” phenomena.

kristianp 5y ago

No mention of how far away from the prediction the mass is?

Pinegulf 5y ago

Worried? No, no no... Something seem to be odd and that's wonderful. Discovery awaits.

guelo 5y ago

Recent related discussions Newly Measured Particle Seems Heavy Enough to Break Known Physics(https://www.quantamagazine.org/fermilab-says-particle-is-heavy-enough-to-break-the-standard-model-20220407/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/fermilab-says-particle-is-hea...) 189 points|digital55|7 days ago|122 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30948260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30948260 Measurement of the W boson mass reveals 7σ deviation from calculations(https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781) 355 points|nvalis|6 days ago|151 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30955033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30955033 Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'(https://www.cnet.com/science/why-scientists-are-worried-about-the-w-boson-something-is-amiss/ https://www.cnet.com/science/why-scientists-are-worried-abou...) 74 points|hsnewman|4 days ago|41 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30977931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30977931

hanselot 5y ago

gwbas1c 5y ago

Remember that the Theory of Relativity came about because of discrepancies with Newton's laws of mechanics and observations of the planets' orbits. Hopefully this opens doors for plenty of new research and discoveries.